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''As the World Turns'' (often referred to as ''ATWT'') is an American television soap opera that aired on CBS for 54 years from April 2, 1956 to September 17, 2010. Irna Phillips created ''As the World Turns'' as a sister show to her other soap opera ''Guiding Light''. Running for 54 years, ''As the World Turns'' holds the second-longest continuous run of any daytime network soap opera on American television, surpassed only by ''Guiding Light''. ''As the World Turns'' was produced in New York City for all of its time (its first 43 years in Manhattan and in Brooklyn from 2000 until 2010). Set in the fictional town of Oakdale, Illinois, the show debuted on April 2, 1956, at 1:30 pm EST. Prior to that date, all serials had been fifteen minutes in length. ''As the World Turns'' and ''The Edge of Night'', which premiered on the same day at 4:30 pm EST, were the first two to be thirty minutes in length from their premiere. At first, viewers did not respond to the new half-hour serial, but ratings picked up in its second year, eventually reaching the top spot in the daytime Nielsen ratings by fall 1958. In 1959, the show started a streak of weekly ratings wins that would not be interrupted for over twelve years. The show switched to color on August 21, 1967, and expanded from a half-hour in length to one hour starting on December 1, 1975 when ''The Edge of Night'' moved to ABC. In the year-to-date ratings, ''As the World Turns'' was the most-watched daytime drama from 1958 until 1978, with ten million viewers tuning in each day. At its height, core actors such as Helen Wagner, Don MacLaughlin, Don Hastings, and Eileen Fulton became nationally known. Three of these actors – Wagner, Hastings, and Fulton – are also the three longest serving actors in the history of American soap operas. The show passed its 10,000th episode on May 12, 1995, and celebrated its 50th anniversary on April 2, 2006. On September 18, 2009, ''As the World Turns'' became the last remaining Procter and Gamble produced soap opera for CBS after ''Guiding Light'' aired its final episode on the network. On December 8, 2009, CBS announced that it had canceled ''As the World Turns'' after almost 54 years due to low ratings.〔(CBS Cancels 'As the World Turns,' Procter & Gamble's Last Soap Opera - nytimes.com )〕 The show taped its final scenes on June 23, 2010, and with a dramatic storyline finale, its final episode aired on September 17, 2010. On October 18, 2010 CBS replaced ''As the World Turns'' with a newly debuted talk show ''The Talk''. ==Premise== ''As the World Turns'' was the creation of Irna Phillips who, beginning in the 1930s, had been one of the foremost creators and writers of radio soap operas. As a writer, Phillips favored character development and psychological realism over melodrama, and her previous creations (which included ''Guiding Light'') were especially notable for placing professionals – doctors, lawyers, and clergy people – at the center of their storylines. Phillips wrote: "As the world turns, we know the bleakness of winter, the promise of spring, the fullness of summer and the harvest of autumn—the cycle of life is complete." And so it was with ''As the World Turns'', with its slow-moving psychological character studies of families headed by legal and medical professionals. The personal and professional lives of doctors and lawyers would remain central to ''As the World Turns'' throughout its run, and would eventually become standard fare on many soap operas. Whereas the 15-minute radio soaps often focused on one central, heroic character (for example, Dr. Jim Brent in Phillips' ''Road of Life''), the expanded 30-minute format of ''As the World Turns'' enabled Phillips to introduce a handful of professionals within the framework of a family saga. One of Phillips' innovations was to introduce a sort of Greek chorus to the stories. The primary purpose of characters such as Nancy Hughes (Helen Wagner) was to comment on the crises faced and decisions made by the town's more dynamic residents. This technique contributed to the popularity of the show and continues to be widely used in other soap operas. Phillips' style favored gradual evolution over radical change. Slow, conversational, and emotionally intense, the show moved at the pace of life itself – and sometimes even more slowly than that. Each new addition to the cast was done in a gradual manner, and was usually a key contact to one of the members of the Hughes family. As such, the show earned a reputation as being quite conservative, though the show did showcase a gay male character in 1988.〔Nochimson, Martha. ''No End to Her: Soap Opera and the Female Subject''. University of California Press, 1992. 174. ''Google Books''. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. ISBN 0-520-07771-7.〕 During the show's early decades, the content-related policies of its sponsor Procter & Gamble Productions may have contributed to the perception of conservatism. The soap-manufacturing giant typically balked at storylines in which adultery and other immoral behavior would go unpunished, and as late as the 1980s characters from the primary families were still generally not allowed to go through with abortions. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「As the World Turns」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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